Polarization is as American as America itself. Dichotomous thinking is so deeply rooted in our country’s DNA that we no longer see it for what it is: a chasm that threatens to corrupt our cultural bedrock. The Satanic Panic of the 1980s is just one example of the fallout from group polarization. Recipe for a Moral Panic examines this event and, more broadly, the cyclical nature of moral panics in America.

The underlying fear of Otherness which resulted in the Satanic Panic is still very much alive and well today. We have seen it repeated countless times within our country—from the Salem Witch Trials to QAnon today. In seven chapters, the book outlines the different factors that lay the groundwork for the Satanic Panic and the reverberating fall out that followed, structured in the form of a traditional cookbook.

The visual system pushes beyond the usual tropes associated with Satanism, playing with the metaphor of cooking to represent the unattainable ideals of the nuclear family. The modular typeface utilized throughout the book is based on the blackletter type so often associated with religious text.